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MU’s campaign at the London 2012 Olympics

The MU’s campaign to ensure that musicians were paid at the London 2012 Olympics received media coverage across the UK, Europe and the USA.

Unfortunately, LOCOG continued to say that they were not aware of any official approaches to professional musicians to ask them to work for free, despite the MU sending LOCOG example after example of exactly that – professional musicians being asked to play Olympic gigs for which there is no budget. Copies of these emails have been shown to the media, the London Mayor and the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

The shameful treatment of musicians by LOCOG is, we believe, symptomatic of the fact that too many people seem to think that music and entertainment are a hobby rather than a career, and are unaware of the years of training and hard work that it takes to become a professional performer. This leads to performers being asked or expected to work for free in far too many instances.

The MU is looking to challenge the idea that musicians should be happy to work for free and we will be doing further work on this in the autumn – watch this space.